Reeder: A Perfect Google Reader App for the iPhone

I am always trying to stay in the know when it comes to technology. I just love reading about it everyday and seeing what is up and coming. This is where something like Google Reader comes in very handy. I can pull in all the news stories from all the different websites I read and have it all in one place. Definitely a great way to get your news if you get it from many different sources.

But this review isn’t about Google Reader, but an application that is very similar to it and yet offers a ton more features — Reeder for the iPhone. For those of you that don’t know, Reeder has been around for a couple of years now and I have used it on the iPhone for a long time. It’s a great app to use to browse the news and save for later reading when you are on a bigger screen.

Setting Up Reeder

There isn’t a whole lot of set up when it comes to Reeder, because that mainly happens in Google Reader. If you have a Google account you can get access to Google Reader. From there you can then subscribe to the different news websites that you are wanting to read.

Once you have all your news feeds in Google Reader, you have basically done everything you need to do, because when you are in Reeder, all you have to do is log in with your Google Account credentials and then it will pull all your data from Google Reader. You don’t have to do anything else to get started.

Reading Your Feeds

As we all know, reading on the iPhone is not the most ideal way to read if we had a choice. But at the same time, it still is a decent option. Reeder provides you with a variety of solutions when it comes to reading your articles on the iPhone.

View of folders and articles

When you pull up a news story to read in Reeder, you will see a slimmed down version of what the actual story would look like on the web. But no need to worry, you still get the whole article and just about everything you need to know what is going on in the story. You just don’t get the glitz and glamour of the regular site.

There are still more options to read your articles. You have the option of looking at the mobile website for the article that you are reading if you so choose. But say you are in a hurry and you want to just glance through your news feed and want to read the interesting ones later. There are a nice group of services that you can use to save articles for later. For example, you can use Instapaper, Read It Later, Evernote, Delicious, Pinboard and Zootool. These are all great services for saving and reading your interesting articles later. Personally, I use Instapaper, but you really can’t go wrong with any of the options.

Screenshot of an article in Reeder and on the web

Syncing and Sharing

In this day and age, syncing and sharing are two key features that separate an average app from a solid app. There is no point if you can’t sync and share now days, especially in an app like Reeder. Fortunately, it does these two things very well. Reeder keeps your feeds in sync with Google Reader as well as Reeder for iPad and the Mac. So if you mark an article as read, star it, etc, all those changes will be made in Google Reader as well and vice versa.

Syncing and sharing services

You have the standard ways to share your articles as well. Articles can be emailed, tweeted, or shared on Facebook. The services I mentioned earlier for saving articles can also be used to share if you so choose.

Why Choose Reeder?

There are a good handful of iPhone apps to use to read your news from Google Reader. So why should you choose Reeder and why is it so popular?

First, it is easy to set up, plus it’s very clean and polished. You look at some of the other apps out there to read your Google Reader articles and there is so much going on within the app. For me, I just want something that works and is clean. I don’t need all the extra bells and whistles that I will never use.

Secondly, there is a Mac and iPad app. This means I can read my news feeds on any of my devices and just use Reeder and everything stays in sync.

Conclusion

Overall, Reeder is hands down, one of the best Google Reader apps out there for the iPhone. Reading on the iPhone is not the best, and Reeder does a good job of helping alleviate that problem by giving you great reading views and lots of sharing services for later reading.

The only thing that makes me a little nervous about endorsing this app is the price. It costs $2.99 for the iPhone. To the casual reader, this price may be too high, but for one who uses their iPhone a lot to glance at their Google Reader feed, the $2.99 is well worth the price. For me, it comes down to the old adage, “What you pay for, is what you get.” And let me tell you, you get a solid reading experience with this app.